Condensing by Means of Parallel Construction.
Condensing by Means of Parallel Construction. Parallel construction can be used for conden¬sing as well as for expanding a thought. Bear in mind the following directions when writing the exercises in condensation : 1. Subordinate statements when you must do so in order to have parallel construction. 2. Repeat the preposition, subordinate conjunction, or other connective, when clearness demands a repetition. 3. Change the wording when it is necessary to do so in order to make the construction parallel. 4. Exercise Condense into one sentence the sentences in each parenthesis. Do not use coordinate statements. Let the coordination be between words, phrases, and clauses, not between statements : I. (" Our royalists were not heartless, dangling court¬iers. They did not bow at every word. They did not simper at every step.) (They were not mere machines for destruction dressed up in uniform. They were not caned into skill. They were not intoxicated into valor. They did not defend without love. They did not destroy without hatred.) (There was a freedom in their subserviency. There was a nobleness in their very degradation.") (" These fanatics brought to civil and military affairs a coolness of judgment. They brought an immutability of purpose. These qualities some writers have thought inconsistent with their religious zeal. They were in fact the necessary effect of it.) (They went through the world like Sir Artegal's iron man Talus with his flail. Like him they crushed and trampled down oppressors. They mingled with human beings. They had neither part nor lot in .human infirmities. They were insensible to pain. They were insensible to pleasure. They were insensible to fatigue. They were not to be pierced by any weapon. They were not to be withstood by any barrier.") ("The Puritans were no vulgar fanatics. They roused the people to resistance. They directed their measures through a long series of eventful years. They formed the finest army that Europe had ever seen. They formed this army out of the most unpromising material. They trampled down king, church, and aristocracy. They made the name of England terrible to every nation on the face of the earth. They did this in the short intervals of domestic sedition and rebellion.") Iv. ("The very meanest of them was a being to whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged. On his slightest action the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious interest. He had been destined to enjoy felicity. He was so destined before heaven and earth were created. This felicity would continue, he thought, when heaven and earth should have passed away.") V. (" Milton labored with zeal for the public good. He endured with fortitude every private calamity. He looked down with disdain on temptation and danger. He bore a deadly hatred to bigots and tyrants. He sternly kept faith with his country and his fame. We envy no man who can study either the life or writings of the great poet and patriot without aspiring to emulate these virtues.") VI. (" They have found their punishment in their success. Laws have been overturned. Tribunals have been subverted. Their industry has no vigor. Their commerce is expiring. Their revenue has been unpaid. Yet the people are impoverished. Their church has been pillaged, and their state not relieved. Civil and military anarchy have been made the constitution of the kingdom. Everything human and divine has been sacrificed to the idol of public credit. National bank¬ru ptcy is the consequence.) . . . . -Were all these dreadful things necessary ? No ! nothing like it. (The fresh ruins of France, which shock our feelings wherever we turn our eyes, are not the devastation of civil war. They are the sad but instructive monuments of rash and ignorant counsel in time of profound peace. They are the display of inconsiderate and presumptuous, because untesisted and irresistible, authority.") Category:Writing techniques